Doyen of American critics turns his back on the 'nasty, stupid' world of modern art

One of America's foremost art critics has launched a fierce attack on the contemporary art world, saying anyone who has "read a Batman comic" would qualify for a career in the industry.

Dave Hickey, a curator, professor and author known for a passionate defence of beauty in his collection of essays The Invisible Dragon and his wide-ranging cultural criticism, is walking away from a world he says is calcified, self-reverential and a hostage to rich collectors who have no respect for what they are doing.

"They're in the hedge fund business, so they drop their windfall profits into art. It's just not serious," he told the Observer. "Art editors and critics – people like me – have become a courtier class. All we do is wander around the palace and advise very rich people. It's not worth my time."

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Were we wrong? I have lived through two global conflicts: the west against Russian communism and now the west against political Islam. The latter was caused by western leaders exaggerating a threat from a tiny group of terrorists to win popularity in war. But the former? Surely the cold war was a good war, a Manichean struggle between competing visions of how to order humanity. If not, then it must have been one of the great mistakes of all time, and a horrific waste of resources.

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